BUSINESS: Growing Your Blog

Starting your blog will be the most exciting journey for you. You're ready to go with your ideas, your thoughts are running at a mile a minute and perhaps, this is the big leap you have taken towards a new career goal. It is achievable but growing your blog and branching out in the world of PR and marketing is a big step, and it takes a little bit of guts and a little bit of luck to get started.

So your blog is going steady, but now you want to help monetize, and smarten it up, grow your reader base and your blog to the point of being able to earn money, and grow good solid relationships with blogger outreach and PR companies. Here are a few tips and strategies as well as downloadedable documents to help you achieve a well run, professional and ultimately more successful blog.

Step One - Brand yourself as well as possible. Your blog design is a huge reflection on yourself, your style, your likes, and your personality. Perhaps you have a specific colour scheme, logos, shapes, or something that truly defines your blog. If you opt for a monochrome, then black and white theme can be just as easy to work with. Branding is super important because consistency in branding creates professionlism and shows a dedication to your craft. Pick a specific design that you like, for example, you want to use this specific colour scheme and logo, make sure you do this across the board.

Brand yourself on every platform of social media that you use, business cards, that you can give out at events or to people who ask, your media pack and even your email signature. All very important things to have to create brand that people will want to invest into. Remember they are investing in you, your style and your work. Consistency is key, and that is across the board, down to your blog posts, your Instagram posts and everything, plan ahead and make sure you stay consistent with your presence online.

Step Two - Make contacts. This is perahps the most vital thing. It can be a daunting thing to pitch to someone and to communicate about your blog, but your blog is your baby, you are probably very proud of it, and this must resonate in your communication. Be proud, be bold and do not fear rejection, as it is something that is such a common problem among people across the board, no matter their background or career. Interact with people on the social medias, comment on other blogs, make friends, this is how you spread your name around the blogging world, and make friends with likeminded people which gives you a good sense of community. Interacting and proving you possess good solid commuincation shows you are reliable, present and makes people more intrigued by what you do.

Send off emails to companies. Speculatively sending emails, or any form of communication is a tough one. When sending off spec letters for jobs, it often proves to be not worth the time, or there is very little in return, but sending them off in bulk doesn't have to be time-consuming, and one reply out of twenty is better than none. Try and focus on what you would like to achieve. If you're wanting sponsored posts, then writing out to PR companies could be a good start. If you're wanting to look at product reviews of affilates, then perhaps look at the companies that are suited to your niche (if you have one) and approach them. Writing is the hard part. Tell them who you are, what your passions are, speak of any past work you have done and your future aims, and of course, attach your media pack, just to give a little touch of professionalism. Try Canva for all of you your design needs.

Marketing Diagram

Step Three - be present on Social Media. Be savvy on the social medias. It is a powerful tool. Make sure you use it. Using Facebook and Twitter to promote your blogs is a must and is probably something you already do. Scheduling tweets and posts can be vital if you are busy or are trying to juggle a few things at once. Try and be present at least 3 times a day, even if this is just favouritising other people's blogs. Spend an hour or so reading through and commenting on new blogs, be sure to leave a link to your blog on the comment, if you don't already. When you're trying to grow your blog, people won't come to you, you have to go to them, and in turn this generates interest, and people may give a quick click to your blog and really enjoy some of the posts, or perhaps some topics resonate with them and they keep coming back. There really is no end in the social media circle - be present.

Use Pinterest more. If you want to, add a Pinterest button to all your blogs photos, for people to pin if they wish, which in turn gives you more online exposure. There also so many other websites where you can get your blog out there, for example, BlogLovin, and Stumbleupon which are two of my personal favourites. On Twitter there are often chats, that happen every week at a set time to chat about blogging, and of course you can always get online with the hashtag #blogginggals and ask for a natter and someone will probably reply to you.

Step Four - SEO. This is a big thing, and I do not have the knowledge to delve into the depths of SEO because it is a huge topic, and there are so many dos and dont's. However, never underestimate the power of a no-follow link. The more good links on your page, the more command you have of your blog, the higher your DA and so on and so forth. Do-follow links, well they come at your discretion, and they can be a bit taboo to talk about, but it really depends on if you're willing to risk penalties and possibly your DA dropping, or if you're OK with that. The keywords to make your blog apear higher up in Google searches, depends on where you use your keywords. Good clear titles, consistency with the keywords and the topic of the blog is also key. Key in your buzzwords when adding any image to your site, which helps with Google searches too. Overtime, Google picks up on this and you may start seeing your photos appearing in Google searches, it's pretty exciting!

All in all, the key to success in any job or industry is passion. if you love what you do and your writing reads that way, then you're half way there. You may have quiet days, or days when your stats are so low you want to just nuzzle your head into a glass of wine and forget about the world, but sometimes it picks up, and sometimes all it takes is a little bit of perseverance and patience. Above all though, just remember you are never alone and there are always other bloggers who can relate to what you're going through. But, don't give up.